ethanol

INEOS New Planet BioEnergy — a joint venture between the biofuels division of the chemicals company INEOS, and waste management and biofuel facility consultants New Planet Energy — secured a $75 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biorefinery Assistance Program, the government agency confirmed today.
The company plans to use the money to construct… Read More

As oil continues to spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is looking towards alternatives such as biofuels. BP announced today that it will acquire the cellulosic biofuels business of Verenium. The $98.3 million deal includes Verenium’s biofuel facilities in Jennings, LA and San Diego, CA. But it doesn’t include Verenium’s commercial enzyme business, and allows Verenium to develop… Read More

Ethanol fuel was always a mystery to me. Really, I never took the time to learn about it until I watched this 3:31 video that shows how a Pennsylvania company, Coskata, converts anything that contains carbon into fuel. Yeah, it’s an infomercial for GM, but it always quickly explains the whole waste to fuel conversion process and so it might be worth your time. Read More

Beer, the third most popular beverage in the world after water and tea, just gained another reason for our support. Sierra Nevada Brewing, makers of fine beverages, recently purchased an EFuel 100 MicroFueler, which produces ethanol from water, sugar, and yeast. Guess what one of the major byproducts of beer fermentation is? Yup, yeast! The excess yeast left over from brewing will soon find… Read More

Professor Michikazu Hara, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has created an inexpensive substance, which can boost the efficiency of ethanol production. Reportedly, the costs of producing bio-ethanol from rice straw and other nonfood crops can be cut by more than 30%.
Hara says the special catalyst he created is able to break down plant-based material and produce sugar (one… Read More

Using excess or leftover corn as a fuel source sure sounded like a good idea, especially here in the U.S. Let’s get our farmers from, I don’t, Iowa, to set aside a certain percentage of arable land for the production of fuel corn. (The term “fuel corn” may or may not exist, but it should if it doesn’t.) This corn, rather than being used for food, would be used for… Read More

First of all, I think it should be said that the whole corn-as-fuel idea is a red herring when it comes to alternative energy. The corn industry is a bloated mess and throwing the demands of widespread biofuel use into the mix would probably push it beyond the breaking point and make for some really weird corn politics.
That said, if the process of fueling some things with corn is made easier… Read More